19 comments:

Thank you, Tom, for bringing Russell Lee into our day. Although he worked a bit before my time, the scenes are much like the ones I remember of the vast landscape, the early days of rusty vehicles and implements piling up, the land being blocked by dams (in my case, the Oahe Dam), flooding rich river land that held vacant Native American villages, thickets filled with wildlife, pure streams, teeming with minnows. Settlers (our neighbors) had to leave their homes. All the history and beauty – gone, buried by progress. The photo of the men squatting in a circle brings back memories of my father and others who would on those rare occasions discuss the condition of the soil, grass, crops, and livestock.

For some reason, this blog with Lee’s photos and your words and keen insight prompted me to pull Wallace Stegner’s Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs off the shelf. It opened to this: “The loneliness and vulnerability of those towns always moves me, for I have lived in them. I know how the world of a child in one of them is bounded by weedy prairie, or the spine of the nearest dry range, or by flats where plugged tin cans lie rusting and the wind has pasted paper and plastic against the sagebrush. I know how precious is the safety of a few known streets and vacant lots and familiar houses. I know how the road in each direction both threatens and beckons. I know that most of the children in such a town will sooner or later take that road, and that only a few will take it back.”

Beautiful series of 'captions' (poem-as-caption) here, Russell Lee's pictures bringing 'back' what's gone out there -- but also completely present, in its constantly renewing forms of 'progress' that, to take an example close to you, fill the Berkeley freeway this morning w/ more cars and trucks than ever (?). Yes "the distances seemed endless" . . . .

8.9

grey whiteness of fog against invisibletop of ridge, blue jay on redwood fencein foreground, sound of wave in channel

distance, flow of ideas that continue to be grounded

at times, is constant itself, turn of mind sufficient

grey-white of fog against top of ridge,wingspan of pelican flapping toward it

Stephen, I hate to disagree with you, since I think you're both beautiful-souled and brilliant, but my tendency is to read this series of posts as "how prescient the past can be." First as tragedy, then as farce ... ?? Politically maybe, but not for the people involved.

I don't think Tom's *only*writing/illustrating a world that was here. Feels a lot like the world that is, the world-to-be ...

The distances/vistas may not be so endless anymore, but the once-broke-down engine's again all broke down ...

Or, maybe I should just way, it's back to the breadlines for all of us, soon.

Regarding "prescient", I suppose I wish I knew. On Sunday, I watched a television interview program on CNN hosted by Fareed Zakarhia, the bland and self-regarding Newsweek columnist, which featured two former Secretaries of the Treasury: Paul O'Neill (George W. Bush administration) and Robert Rubin (Clinton administration). The collective smugness and self-satisfaction in the interview room spilled out through the television set. No one said anything even vaguely illuminating or elucidating. I was reminded that television is more an entertainment medium than a news medium (hence, CNBC, and its inability to offer reasonably accurate predictions regarding anything concerning the subject they cover 24-hours a day, 365 days a year) and also why CNN is doing so poorly in the ratings.

Thanks John B-R and yes, "how prescient the past can be." When I noted Lee's pictures "bringing back what's gone out there" I was thinking of the those people, that open space, those lives in that space -- all of it gone at this point, it seems. They give a 'glimpse' of that past, and Tom's beautiful lines ("captions" in the best sense, 'flat' sounding accounts of what's 'there' -- none of that "smugness" Curtis saw on TV, but fully 'loaded' too, w/ weight of feeling of what's gone and ALSO how much it is still with us here, and still happening, as you say) say all that needs to be said. . . . And here we are, talking a bit more, which is a pleasure. Meanwhile, another possibility of what can be seen (out there) and said - - -

8.10

grey whiteness of fog against invisibleridge, shadowed green of leaf on branchin foreground, sound of wave in channel

green shape and color, think of so much nature human

thought in this way, whether, possibility unconcealed

grey-white of fog reflected in channel,wingspan of gull flapping toward point

Marcia's memories and citation from Stegner are particularly to the point, here.

A bit of information may be in order regarding the man who created the remarkable pictures in this series of posts.

Russell Lee was born in Ottawa, Illinois in 1903. Events in his early life perhaps disposed him to a compassion for the human condition in unsettling times, times of instability and struggle. His parents were divorced. His mother died. He was raised by a series of temporary guardians. At fourteen he was sent off to Culver Military Academy in Indiana, a school noted for its strict disciplinary methods in rehabilitation of "hard cases".

Lee went on to Lehigh University, where he took a degree in chemical engineering. Back in Illinois he got a job with a firm manufacturing roofing materials. He married, was promoted to a plant manager position in Kansas City, but by 1929 had become disenchanted with the idea of a career in business. With his wife he moved first to San Francisco, where he took up painting, then to an artist's colony in Woodstock, New York.

In 1934 he acquired a camera and began to experiment with photography as an aid to his painting. Before long the new interest had entirely absorbed him. His chemical training allowed him to explore the technical aspects of the photographic medium, in which he quickly became an innovator. Over the winter of 1934-1935 he did his first documentary work, photographing urban scenes of unemployment, hunger and deprivation in New York City. The following spring he traveled to Pennsylvania to capture scenes of hardship around bootleg coal mines. He began selling his pictures to magazines.

That year he was hired on by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal Agency which had soon morphed into the Farm Security Administration. Working under director Roy Stryker, Lee became an FSA mainstay, traveling the country to create a record of life among the rural poor in the depths of Hard Times.

In 1939 he divorced and not long afterward remarried to Jean Smith, a Dallas journalist, with whom thereafter he worked closely on his photographic projects. She interviewed his photo subjects, kept careful notes and wrote his photo captions. Her gift for making contact with common people became essential to his work, in which the distance between photographer and subjects seems to barely exist.

The genius of Lee's art lies in his ability to capture, without patronizing, a dignity of soul that remains intact beneath humiliation and injustice. In his work we see beyond the despair and suffering of the times to the celebration of modest pleasures and moments of human kindness. The collective spirit takes on a palpable life before our eyes.

Thinking a bit further... and looking again now at these things from the "under the weather" perspective of a chilly, cloud-shrouded, traffic-choked, siren-frightened night in what feels to be a time and place spiritually impoverished beyond the reach of historical analogy.

(Steve is all too accurate, by the way, in his drive-through view.)

It seems I've tried to hint, in the earlier comment, that early scenes of loss in the artist's life may inform later concerns: displacement, relocation, resettlement.

These are at any rate the overriding themes in Russell Lee's work, perhaps their most salient expression coming in his visit to the Pie Town Fair, where he discovers Community.

But the personal history and the social history converge, finally, in an exploration beyond the scope of either.

The memorial function of poiesis: to rediscover

green shape and color, thinkof so much nature human

thought in this way, whether,possibility unconcealed...

The interpretation given in the lines under Lee's photos in these posts is one person's reading of a history that may or may not belong to many. I find in these photos a unique depth of field, a breadth of perspective that at once registers quiet compassion and bespeaks the inexpressible in distance; permeates landscapes with loneliness yet finds its company in presence; a deep rich light that suffuses mute absence and speechless longing with a tone that borders on the tragic.

Such work helps us recall that even when but young, there was in these spaces perhaps always something old beyond words.

(And I for one, by the by, have never found anything but gimcrack fraudulence in Salvador Dali, whose name has been evoked... though once, long ago, in Spain, I saw him descend a rope ladder from a helicopter... surrounded by señoritas in party dresses at a local fería... in order to award the ears of a slaughtered bull to a fancy matador swanning around in tight pants. No, I don't think "we" "need" a reincarnation of that.)

I'm basically with you regarding Dali (the "gimcrack fraudulence"), but you actually saw him descend a rope ladder from a helicopter in Spain surrounded by señoritas in party dresses at a local fería? You must admit that creates a powerful, memorable image. The closest I've come to that sort of absolute weirdness was once walking up 6th Avenue in New York and seeing a skeletal, scarecrow-y looking, white-blond Peter O'Toole (he was appearing in a revival production of My Fair Lady at the time) approaching. He was alone, dressed in a bright white suit, waving a cigarette holder around and talking to an invisible companion, looking totally otherworldly.

However surreal it may sound, the Dali apparition was "in fact" real. This was 1964, in a small town on the Costa Brava. As is traditional, each such town will have one major bullfight per year, on the occasion of the annual fería. This particular town was very close to Dali's home. Each year his ritual was to appear at the "climax" of the bullfight. But by this time however he was old and ailing and obviously couldn't be bothered to make the trip unless travel was laid on. Thus the helicopter. I had no idea this was about to happen, so it came as a bit of a shock. On top of the bullfight nausea. Argh, double argh.

The disheveled O'Toole street sightings are apparently numberless. The man must be made of Teflon. He actually "played" such a character, brilliantly, in the Keith Waterman theatrical piece "Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell" (1992). This performance was on dvd for a while, but the dvd went out of print and copies are now worth 100-150 quid, it seems. A fan diligently posted the whole thing on YouTube, and bit by bit all 13 episodes then came down, for copyright violation reasons.

In this 2007 interview with Charlie Rose, O'Toole, very much "in character", hilariously recounts once having played Hamlet in front of Noel Coward, while inadvertently wearing horn-rims.

When farming in the Midwest was at its greatest demand farmers plowed under all the available topsoil. This decision meant getting rid of all the perennial prairie grass. Once the prairie grass was destroyed, there was nothing to hold the dry dirt down.

the farmers own farming technique and attempt to reap huge profits off grain sales off of "them Rich Eastern City Folk"

caused as much, if not more, of the problem as the drought!

same sort of things happening now only it is flood-waters with no natural path-ways to run-off.

what was that song..

about pave-over and make another parking lot... Janis Joplin? or was it Joanie Mitchell?

They paved paradiseAnd put up a parking lotWith a pink hotel, a boutiqueand a swinging hot spotDon't it always seem to goThat you don't know what you've gotTill it's goneThey paved paradiseAnd put up a parking lot

They took all the treesAnd put them in a tree museumAnd they charged all the peopleA dollar and a half to see 'emDon't it always seem to goThat you don't know what you've gotTill it's goneThey paved paradiseAnd they put up a parking lot

Very interesting site. I came across it after seeing an episode of Route 66: A month of sundays that featured Butte in general and St. Lawrence O'Toole's church in Butte. So I was looking for more on this interesting area.